See now all the works of the Most High: they come in pairs, one the opposite of the other. (Sir 33:15)The Ultimate Question (the UQ)

St. Hildegard of Bingen's "Universal Man"

is "Why are we physical?"First, what do I even mean by "the Ultimate Question"? Exactly that -- the question that ends all questions, the question that contains in itself all other questions. In other words, this is the question you would ask God if you could only ask him one question. It is the most efficient way to ask him about everything.OK, but why "Why are we physical?" of all things?You could word the question in other ways, but I think this is the most succinct. Four words (in English, at least). You could also say, "What's the relationship between the physical and spiritual?" (in which case, I'd have to define what I mean by "physical" and "spiritual").Now let me explain the question.It's no wonder that spiritual things exist, such as God and other (human) spirits. These things are worthy of existing in themselves. They exist for themselves. So basically, I understand why I should exist (my soul, or mind, however you want to call it), but why do I have a body? If I can exist without a body (as do dead humans in the afterlife, God, and angels), why do I have one? If all these other spiritual beings can get along fine without a body, what's the purpose of having one?You might say, "But what's the point of asking such a silly question, since you have to live in a body whether you like it or not?", which I can't disagree with, but never mind being practical -- let me complain anyway. This is philosophy after all.Now when I talk about human bodies, I don't mean the question to cover just human bodies. It's much more than that. (It's the Ultimate Question, after all.) I mean, why do we live in a physical universe, with time, space, matter and energy, instead of just a spiritual realm? What is the purpose of all this physicality? To me it seems quite redundant, and I think I might even rather do without, but if God made all this physicality, how can I argue with him? So I don't argue with him, but I do complain, and I do ask. He must have had a good reason for it, since I trust that God has good reasons for everything. He thought it so important that he decided to become physical (in the Incarnation).But I don't even mean actual physicality when I say "physical". I mean everything has a physical component (just as everything has a spiritual component). Take a look at this chart (which is by no means exhaustive, because you can't exhaust it):

*Exs: trisection of angle, the quintic†my own terms. Please see "History of the World" for the explanation.​Anyway, the reason I say "Why are we physical?" instead of "What's the relationship between the physical and spiritual?" is because it's the most significant way in which we live in a physical universe, and therefore, the most fundamental and simplest way of thinking of the problem.Discovery of the UQ: The first time I realized this was while reading Leisure: The Basis of Cultureand The Philosophical Act, by Josef Pieper (a 20th century German, Catholic, Neo-Thomistic philosopher). Naturally, the book's about leisure. It pointed out that there's rest just so you can work more, and then there's the sabbath kind of rest -- celebrations, leisure activities, even philosophical contemplation -- all things that the utilitarian mindset of modern man shuns and denigrates. This led me to think about what I call the 4 modes of human life. These are work, rest, eating and sex. I was thinking about how you can work, and it's just a job, or you can work and it's your passion. You can eat to live or live to eat. (Again, according to the modern utilitarian mindset, you're supposed to eat to live, while living to eat is supposed to mean you're a glutton). You can have meaningless sex just for fun, or you can have meaningful sex that creates a spiritual bond. So I noticed that there was a utilitarian intention to these 4 things, but also a deeper more meaningful intention, depending on how you chose to live your life. Ideally, you would fulfill both intentions. Even sleep, which is a form of rest, had its spiritual component, in the form of dreams. How? Dreams are the door to the subconscious, have been a source of inspiration throughout history, and are even sometimes used by God to communicate with us. They can be a way of touching the spiritual realm. This was all a wonderful realization, but shortly afterwards I realized that this physical/spiritual dichotomy as I came to call it, was in everything. At first, it only seemed that way. Then I suspected that it was really true, then I gained more confidence that this was, indeed, the Ultimate Question (UQ). And from then on, though it should be no surprise, it always gives me a thrill to find the UQ manifested in yet one more phenomenon. From that small step from the 4 modes of human life to taking the leap to questioning the very physicality of human existence I suppose could only have been natural. On the other hand, there's thousands of ways to get into the Ultimate Question, and why was this my way in, I can't say. You'll be seeing the UQ all over this website, which is partly why I gave it its own page. Which comes first -- the physical or spiritual? The spiritual. For example, the primes come before the composites, faith comes before reason (as I go into a little below, and which you can read more about under Epistemology and Faith); propositions, statements, theorems and proofs are derived from axioms, the actual comes from the possible, background causes give rise to the immediate cause, all real numbers are imaginary numbers but not all imaginary numbers are real numbers, 0.333... only approximates 1/3; if you love, you will be righteous, but if you are righteous, that does not necessarily mean that you love; one is saved by grace and so becomes righteous -- striving to be good will not lead to true righteousness, the old covenant was put in place for the sake of the new, the spirit of the law inspires the letter of the law. These are only examples for those of you who aren't convinced -- with true faith, this is immediately apparent (ie, if it's not obvious, it probably means you're a materialist). When I say "first" I don't literally mean which came first in terms of time, since many of these examples are abstract and do not exist in time (such as prime and composite numbers). You may object, "But what about the parts and the whole? Don't you need the parts to build the whole?" (I'm just pulling stuff off the chart.) Yes, but that doesn't mean the parts come first. For example, a car is made of parts; you cannot build a car without them. But when the car was first invented, didn't the inventor have a vision of the car first, have in mind a purpose, and then went about trying to figure out what that vision required (parts-wise) in order to manifest his total idea? "But wait! What about arithmetic? Don't addition and subtraction come before multiplication and division?" In school they do; I don't know about in the platonic realm of math. "Then what about sensation and perception?" True, we need to sense something before we perceive it, it's how we are as physical beings, but the fact that we can perceive at all had to be built in. We can only process what our "programming" will allow. So then we can see that we were made to sense certain things, a sunset, music, an embrace. You may object and say, "No, we weren't 'programmed'; we just evolved that way." (What this means is "Sensing, bit by bit, led to perception.") But I say, "Evolved to hear, process and appreciate music? Please tell me, what for, other than for itself?" That's 3 objections. I think by now you get the point. But I thought of an exception to this: the individual vs the group. The individual is physical, the group is spiritual, but the individual comes first, and then the group. There could be no group without individuals. So unless this pair can be flip-flopped (see below), and I don't currently see how it can, I think this objection stands, and I consider it a problem to be solved. Some pairs in the UQ can be flip-flopped. Perhaps free will vs fate/determinism is the best example of this. On one hand, free will can be characterized as spiritual because it's the power by which a spirit determines its own direction in freedom, while fate/determinism is rigid and a "program" to be followed. That's looking at it from the human perspective. But you can also flip it the other way and look at it from the divine perspective, in which free will is physical because it represents the natural power of man, while fate/determinism represents the supernatural power of God. Another example is function/utility vs form/aesthetics. In the chart, I listed function/utility as physical and form/aesthetics as spiritual. This is because in this case, I'm looking at functionality as utilitarian, but form as style, decoration. But I could also see function as spiritual because it has purpose, while form/aesthetics could be seen as physical because we're talking about physical form. Why are only some pairs flippable, and most others not? For example, intelligence and creativity in themselves, at least to me, are not flippable. However, if you talk about the process of creativity, the individual stages -- preparation, incubation, inspiration and verification, we see that the first and last stages are physical, while the middle 2 are spiritual. But the question still stands. Some pairs can also be further subdivided -- mind and body, for example. Mind can be further divided into mind and heart -- therefore, the common trichotomy of body, mind and heart is actually a dichotomy within a dichotomy. Another good example of this is finite and infinite, where the infinite further subdivides into countably and uncountably infinite. The UQ implies 2, which often implies 4 (because of its "splitting effect", dividing and reproducing like Fibonacci's rabbits). This is why so many phenomena come in 2's and 4's, like the first UQ dichotomy I found -- the 4 modes of human life. If we use the criterion of dividing them according to whether they are done as an end in themselves or as means to and end, work and sex would be physical because in both the purpose is to produce something, in the case of work perhaps some product and in the case of sex a baby, while eating and rest/leisure are done for the sake of the individual's own sustenance, well-being or pleasure. Further dividing, we can say that work is physical and sex spiritual, this time because sex is (usually) seen, more so than work, as something done as an end in itself, while with eating and rest/leisure, rest/leisure is obviously the one that's seen as more intrinsically motivated. Also, these same 4 modes cycle into each other -- you work so you can eat, so you can live and enjoy life (leisure) and maybe even get laid if you're lucky, but in order to work you have to rest, and so it continues. In this sense the 4 modes are also flippable, because you could say that eating and rest are physical because they're absolute necessities demanded by physical life (you must sleep, after all, even if you never allow yourself any kind of entertainment, and then you'll be entertained while you're sleeping by your dreams), while work and sex are not necessarily necessary; if you can make easy money, inherit a windfall, are retired or live off the state or alms, you don't have to, and may choose not to, work, and sex is definitely not necessarily, although unlike in the case of not having to work, not having sex doesn't sound as attractive to most people. What the UQ is Not Now I don't want the UQ to be confused with the concept of yin-yang. I know they sound similar, and indeed, they often coincide, but with the UQ each side plays the distinct role of either physical or spiritual, while with yin-yang while there are also 2 sides, they are better characterized as simple opposites or some variation on the positive-negative/active-passive duality. While the yin-yang dualities are important (see below under "Problems"), they're not examples of the UQ because 1)it's not apparent (at least to me) how one role is spiritual and one physical, and 2)some pairs under yin-yang are the exact opposite of what they would be under the UQ. Here's an example that I put in a little table for you because it makes it easier to see the contradiction:

System: Yin-YangSides: YinPair 1: SubconsciousPair 2: Matter

YangConsciousEnergy

System: UQSides: SpiritualPair 1: SpiritualPair 2: Energy

PhysicalPhysicalMatter

As you can see, the 2 systems agree for the first pair, but contradict each other for the second. Under yin-yang, it makes sense that matter would be yin, because yin is passive, inert, while ​yang is supposed to be active and dynamic, but under the UQ, matter is physical and energy is spiritual (which is self-explanatory). The UQ is also not simple negation (cold and not cold). This is related to yin-yang because I feel that many yin-yang pairs are actually just something and not something. That, to me, doesn't say much -- being and nothing, for example. This may be why this example, in my opinion, doesn't count as a UQ dichotomy. That is, if it's true that the above example is just a simple negation, then perhaps this is why I can't see how it fits into the UQ -- because it's trivial. However, see below (Problems with the UQ). Another example of how the UQ is not just a simple negation is faith -- it's simple negation is despair, but the UQ says that its counterpart is logic/reason. This brings me to the observation that with yin-yang, dualities can often be characterized as pairs of good-bad. Light-dark, weak-strong, life-death are examples of this. But this isn't the emphasis nor the criterion of the UQ. If you go back to the T-chart above, you can see that the pairs do not have this good-bad value judgement, but are rather neutral, and one without the other is what's bad. The eastern philosophy of yin-yang says that you can't have the good without the bad. They take it for granted that this is the way the world is and will never change. And this in turn is ultimately due to their belief that all is One, so to see the bad as bad is bad. Basically, they're saying, "Accept it". But traditional western philosophy says that evil isn't intrinsic to good, but is rather a perversion of it (as C.S. Lewis said) and therefore, it does not have to be accepted; in fact, it must be rejected. Nor is the UQ half physical and half spiritual; it is not a mixture; it does not take turns being physical and then spiritual; it is not a matter of seeing it from 2 different angles, or taking different guises in different cases, but it is both at the same time. If it were any of the others, there would be no question, but because it is the latter, the question stands. This is what the human mind cannot grasp. Problems with the UQ1)Yin-Yang Type Dualities: Like I said above, many yin-yang dualities are important (like male-female), and I'd like to fit them into the UQ, but I don't know how. This is a problem. For some yin-yang dualities, I don't think it's a big deal, like day and night or high and low. But for others, such as active-passive, being-nothing, yes-no, good-evil, on-off/yes-no/0 and 1 (binary numbers), I think these are important dualities and while they're easily accomodated under Yin-Yang, they're not under the UQ (again, at least I don't see it). Another reason that makes me think that a simple negated dichotomy (such as positive-negative) should not be treated as trivial (as I suggested in the previous paragraph) is that this kind of dichotomy is very important in math, science and computer science (positive and negative numbers, positive and negative electric charges, binary numbers, for example), as well as even history and economics, like when we talk about the rise and fall of kingdoms, and the rise and fall of the stock market, and especially the big philosophical topic of the Problem of Evil (in which we think of evil as the negation of good) and so the empirical evidence suggests that it deserves consideration and incorporation into the UQ, unless it turns out that the UQ isn't really the UQ. How might we accommodate a yin-yang duality? With male-female we might say they're flippable. Males are generally logical and females emotional; in that sense you could say that men are physical and women spiritual. Also, women have traditionally relied on men for the physical provision they provide, but men rely on women for emotional provision -- for companionship and moral support. Or we might say that women are physical because generally, their concern is with the family (the part), while men's concern is with society (the whole), and so are spiritual. But these are all side considerations -- what really makes a man a man is his active biological role and what makes a woman a woman is her passive biological role. But I see no reason why either activity or passivity should be physical or spiritual. Or maybe a better way of accommodating yin-yang is through logic. As you can see from the table above, "and" is physical and "or" is spiritual. However, they both imply negation (which is exactly what we're trying to accommodate), in that "and" just means "not or" and "or" means "not and". ["Not (P and Q)" means "Not P or not Q" and "Not (P or Q)" means "Not P and not Q".] You can go from one to the other through negation. Therefore we can say that negation is built into the UQ, at least in this example. How do we extend this to other examples? I suppose we could say, for example, that finity is not infinity and vice versa. Maybe we could even say that logic is not emotion, and emotion is not logic, but that's a bit like saying trees are not people and people are not trees. It may be so, and it is, but so what? What are trees to people and people to trees? We can say that logic and emotion are in partnership through the UQ, but to hinge that relationship on negation seems flimsy to me.Trichotomies Two other (individual) counterexamples to the UQ that I've come up with are the 3 dimensions and the Trinity. The 3 dimensions are indistinguishable from each other, so I don't see what identifiable roles they could play that would allow them to be categorized. Given this, it might be a false question to begin with; ie, we shouldn't look at the 3 dimensions as something that falls under the UQ, just as trying to fit pumpkins and glass slippers into the UQ just isn't going to work. And yet the 3 dimensions are so integral to our reality that it would be a shame if it weren't in the UQ. As for the Trinity, that's a biggie (I mean, even bigger than the 3 dimensions), and the persons of the Trinity do have identifiable roles and are distinct from one another, so this is truly a problem for the UQ. I don't even have any suggestions on how to crack this one. On the other hand, perhaps this is only natural, given that it's humanly impossible to grasp the concept of the Trinity itself, let alone, trying to see how it fits into the UQ.More trichotomies:past, present & futurethe 3 states of mattersome things in the Standard Model that involve things coming in 3s, not 2s or 4s -- for example:charge +2/3, -1/33 generations of leptons3 colors of quarksNot saying that this is a trichotomy, since I'm not sure, but here's another trio: utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics​The Error of Choosing Sides​ The world's problems come from not recognizing the truth of both sides of an issue. People divide themselves into camps, pointing fingers at the other side, and saying that they're completely wrong. This is unbalanced thinking. Both sides are right, at the same time. While some of you may accept this as balanced and sensible, others will point out that it's contradictory and illogical. How can both sides be right at the same time? To these people, the UQ is just dialetheism (the belief that things can be true and false at the same time). But that is certainly not what I am saying. Remember that UQ pairs are not simple negated dichotomies (as I discussed above under "What the UQ is Not"). So I am not saying that True is true and False is true; I'm saying that True is true and True is true. "... the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you ... was not Yes and No, but in him it is always Yes. For all the promises of God find their Yes in him," (II Cor 1:20), Jesus being the preeminent example and manifestation of the UQ, since in him we see the divine/spiritual and human/physical come together in one.At the same time, I do realize that it's difficult, even impossible, for us humans to understand this. I am not saying it's difficult to accept this, but to understand this. So why do I accept it even if I don't understand it? (After all, I'm saying it's the Ultimate Question; if I understood it there would be no question) -- because of the empirical evidence. The only way you can pick sides is if you ignore the evidence of the other side. This is why materialists say the self is an illusion, and idealists (such as Hindus), say the world is all maya (illusion). Actually, there's really a brain and really a mind. I compare this to the inscrutability of the infinite. We grasp the concept of infinity, but not its manifestness. We believe in infinity, but cannot fathom it. To actually count it, or imagine it, is too much for us finite beings, constrained as we are by our physicality. So we can say we see the infinite, but never arrive there. "These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth." (Heb 11:13) I chose infinity as a good example of having faith in something yet not understanding it, which I'm using as an analogy to the inscrutability of the UQ. I choose it because for the most part, it's uncontroversial, although, even infinity has its detractors, if you're a finitist. But then, nothing is entirely uncontroversial; man's free will is so great that he can believe anything is true if it so pleases him. So it all comes back to faith. For a dualist, it is difficult to ignore either side. For the materialist, it is difficult to accept the spiritual. For the idealist, it is difficult to accept the physical. A materialist has to be split-minded about the world and keep hypocritically talking about themself as a self, saying "I eat" or "I love" or "I hate", meanwhile, denying that "I exist", while the idealist has to be split-minded about the world and keep brainwashing themself into believing that they also, do not exist, that there is only One, and that they are God. Meanwhile, they must go about as an individual, washing, defecating and working, trying to survive and thrive in a world with very physical demands. I, as a dualist, comfortably do not have such extraordinary problems to overcome. My biggest problem is to just say, "The correct response is not to brainwash myself while I'm in this world, but to wait with faith until the next." This, I think, is the correct response -- to confess the limitations of our humanity and look beyond ourselves for the ultimate answers, because, in the materialist's effort to exalt themself, they deny God, but they cannot do this without denying themself, because both God and they are spiritual, while the idealist, in their effort to exalt themself, proclaims that they are God, but the dualist says, "God is God, and I am not." The materialist reminds me of the story of the Russian peasant that was jealous of his neighbor's goat. When a fairy asked him what was his wish, he said, "Kill the goat!" So the materialist manages to kill God, and his own soul, but, still holding unto their pride, they continue to act as if they, their self, exists. So they will tell you that God is dead, and they'll say that they (their mind) is only an illusion, but then they go about as if everything is real except God. Very convenient. Materialism also leads you to asking the wrong questions. 2 good examples of this are the problem of AI and logicizing math. In both cases, the materialists thought they could do it, but eventually had to admit defeat. For Professor Dreyfus' war with the materialists over the impossibility of AI (and his vindication), click here. And a good discussion of the failed attempt at logicizing math (that is, reducing math to mere logic, instead of respecting the role of intuition), so foolhardy and optimistic at the beginning, and coming to a final fizzle, can be found in the pertinent chapters of The Mathematical Experience (particularly, Foundations Found and Lost, p 330, and Chp 7 more generally [From Certainty to Fallibility]). ​(Amazon page here.) Therefore, the difficulty in accepting the 2 sides does not lie in understanding, but in faith. So then, materialism and idealism in the end are really the same thing, and it is dualism that says something different, and which considers all the evidence. In fact, the 2 examples given above of the failure of materialism serve as empirical vindication of dualism. However, without grace, the pride of man is insurmountable. (To read more about Faith, click here.)Will We Ever Find the Answer to the UQ?I say, no, not in this life. How can we, as I said above, we who are constrained by our physicality? Think about the continuum hypothesis -- Is there a set whose cardinality is strictly between that of the integers and real numbers? Answer (which isn't really an answer): Undecidable. So we have countable infinity on one side (physical) and uncountable infinity on the other (spiritual) and we want to know if there's a kind of infinity that's in between. Maybe. Maybe not. It could be either way. We'll never know. "I saw all the work of God, that man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun. However much man may toil in seeking, he will not find it out. Even though a wise man claims to know, he cannot find it out." (Eccl 8:17) "Then what is the point of asking the question?" you might ask. Because there's always more to learn! Wisdom is like an asymptote -- we can always get closer, but no matter how close we get, we'll never get there. What a ride! "The first human being never finished comprehending wisdom, nor will the last succeed in fathoming her." (Sir 24:28)​QuestionsWhy are some UQ dichotomies flippable, others not?

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.